Chuck Buckley sized up two teenagers sauntering into the small lobby of the Redmond Inn.

It was morning, not a time when people arrive to rent rooms at the motel Buckley managed. The inn usually serves travelers who spot it as they pass on Highway 97.

One teen was tall with spiky blond hair. The other stooped. He sported black, punk clothes and a nail through his ear.

Justin Link and Adam Thomas.

Both teens were out of school. Both had left home. Both had nothing to do but party.

“I was kind of hesitant to check them in,” Buckley said later. “They said they didn’t have a car and they were tired and needed a little rest. So I went ahead.”

Adam paid the $40 or so for one night with cash.

It was Saturday morning, March 24, 2001. This past week had been a gray spring break for students of the Redmond School District.

For Justin and Adam, the week was one continuous haze of alcohol, drugs and sex.

The duo stayed at two different motels during the week.

Teens wandered in and out, in and out of this revolving door party. They caught snatches of sleep here and there.

The swirl of intoxication, freedom and potent emotion began to put something volatile in motion.

Justin, Adam, and Seth Koch, who snuck out at night to go to the motels, began talking regularly about going to Canada. They envisioned the country as a Shangri-La where they could forage from the land and enjoy an Amsterdam-style freedom to smoke marijuana.

Justin frequently showed off his new toy, a 9 mm pistol. Seth had used a key to sneak into his stepfather’s business, Guntraders. Seth and Justin had stolen the gun. The theft went unnoticed.

Many teens who attended the parties later recalled hearing casual insults about Barbara Thomas throughout the week.

“She’s a bitch.”

“I’ve got a round in here for your mom.”

“If that was my mom, I’d kill her.”

No one thought anything of it — or told an adult — until after March 26, 2001, when the words seemed prophetic.

Here is how the week before the murder unfolded.

Monday, March 19. Seven days.

While Barbara Thomas worked, her son visited her house.

Adam Thomas had left home several days before. He now roamed the streets with Justin Link.

Patricia Karle, Lucretia Karle’s younger sister, accompanied the boys to the house. She said Adam showed Justin where the guns were kept.

They called Barbara a bitch. Justin brought up killing her.

“Justin said he would take her and pop, shoot her, then cut her up and stuff her in a tree and no one would find her,” the girl said later.

Justin and Adam said that after they killed Barbara, they would go to Bend, shoot a few cops and then shoot each other with machine guns.

Justin, Patricia Karle said, had a big grin on his face.

Tuesday, March 20. Six days.

Vicki Nill pulled her minivan up to the Karle residence in Redmond.

Her former foster child, Lucretia Karle, 16, needed to get to Bend for juvenile court that day. If Nill didn’t give her a ride, she would have no way to make it.

Lucretia asked Nill if two boys, Justin and Adam, could also get a ride. They had stayed last night at the Karle residence because they had nowhere to sleep.

And Adam no longer had a car. He and Justin had run his Ford Tempo into a fence on Monday, totaling it.

Both boys were quiet during the ride. They asked to be dropped off at Adam’s house on the Old Bend-Redmond Highway. Nill didn’t realize that the teenager had left his mother’s home days before.

When the boys got out, Lucretia told Nill she thought Adam was cute.

“I’d like to get to know him better,” she said.

Wednesday, March 21. Five days.

Adam and Justin found a more permanent place to sleep.

They checked into the Motel 6 on Highway 97 just south of downtown Redmond. They helped pay for it with cash Seth stole from his parents’ home.

Later on Wednesday, Barbara Thomas sat in the lobby of the Redmond Police Station.

It was 6:30 p.m. and darkness had set in. She hadn’t seen her 18-year-old son, Adam Thomas, in five days.

She had continued to go to her job every day in the main office of Prime Outlets of Bend. She curled her dark hair, applied makeup and selected blouses and slacks. She never even went to the grocery store without looking her best, let alone to work.

She projected her usual effervescence, but on the inside she was struggling.

Barbara’s relationship with her youngest son had always had its moments. This last month, Adam had veered from salvageable to self-destructive.

“I think he may be into drugs or something else illegal,” she wrote her elder son, Jason. “What the hell am I going to do?? What can I do? How do I get to him? I am just about to lose my sanity over this whole thing. Ever since he took up with this Justin creep he has totally changed. I am stressed and distraught to the max. I don’t know what to do. I am worried sick.”

As Redmond Police Officer Nick Parker walked into the police station lobby, Barbara sobbed and shook. Mascara ran down her face.

She told the officer how Adam hadn’t shown up for his fast food job at Wendy’s in three days, and how the insurance agent told her about Adam’s car accident. She said she went to the motel room where the agent said Adam was staying. She knocked and knocked.

She heard noise inside. Nobody answered.

“I asked her about her relationship with her son,” Parker said. “She said until recently, it was very good. Then she started crying again.”

Parker told Barbara that there was little police could do, since Adam was 18. However, the officer had business with Justin. The teen had reported himself recently as the victim of an assault, and Parker could reasonably stop by the motel to ask a few more questions about the incident.

Parker asked Barbara to stand away from the peephole and knocked on the door. Adam answered.

“When he saw her, he looked down, took a step back, like he wanted no contact with her, and actually tried to start walking away,” Parker said. “I told him to talk to her.”

Adam and Barbara walked outside to her car. Justin emerged from the bathroom and saw his friend leave.

Parker described Justin later as nervous and restless. As the officer and teenager talked, Justin kept glancing over Parker’s shoulder. He said twice he wanted to go to Adam. Parker told him to give the mother and son space. Inside the motel room, the officer never saw Justin’s pistol.

As he left, Parker stopped by Barbara’s car.

Barbara was crying. She had demanded that Adam give her the house key. He was no longer allowed in the house without her present.

She didn’t know he had a copy.

“Adam,” the officer said, “family is everything. They are always there for you. Friends come and go.”

“Yeah,” Adam replied.

Ricky Karle, Lucretia Karle’s younger brother, spied Adam and his mom in her car as he walked into the Motel 6. He went to the room.

Adam returned. Ricky later recalled the following exchange.

“Bitch,” Adam said.

Justin waved the 9 mm pistol. “I’ve got a round in here for your mom,” he replied.

“They just started laughing about it,” Ricky said.

Thursday, March 22. Four days.

Sometime past midnight, Seth Koch crept away from his house.

He now snuck out regularly and took his parents’ cars. They slept soundly as he drove the family Suburban away from their rural neighborhood. The 15-year-old had his learner’s permit, but was not yet legal to drive.

He picked up Adam, Justin and Lucretia. They started driving toward the Old Bend-Redmond Highway.

That night, hours after speaking to his mother, Adam broke into her house.

He popped the screen to his bedroom window and climbed in. He started handing items out to Seth and Justin.

Inside, on the other end of the house, Barbara slept through the intrusion.

In the Suburban, smoking a cigarette, Lucretia waited.

She was smitten with Adam.

Friday, March 23. Three days.

The phone rang at the Summers residence.

Ashley Summers picked it up. The 15-year-old girl was home alone during this spring break week while her dad was at work.

It was her friend Lucretia. Come down to the Motel 6 and party with some of my friends, she said.

“I was there just to kick it,” Lucretia later said.

There was hard liquor and marijuana to be had, and Ashley met some new folks, including an intriguing boy named Justin Link.

Saturday, March 24. Two days.

The party ended at the Motel 6 in the wee morning hours.

Employees at the business kicked Justin and Adam out. The girls had returned to Ashley’s house to sneak in before her father woke up.

Justin and Adam wandered around for awhile, eventually stopping just a ways north on Highway 97 at the Redmond Inn. They checked in.

Sunday, March 25. One day.

That night, when the party resumed, employees at the Redmond Inn told them to leave. Justin, Adam and Seth slept that night in an abandoned house.

When workers cleaned the room later, they found a box of 9 mm cartridges.

It was nearly dawn as Seth pulled his mother’s Cadillac up the dirt road toward his home.

The plan was now going into effect. Today, they would prepare to go to Canada. But Seth wanted to return home first.

He peeked in the window and saw lights on and his mother dozing on the couch. After sneaking out regularly for weeks, he was finally busted.

Seth got back in the car and drove away.

As the day progressed, the five teens came together.

That morning, Ashley told her father that she was going to meet friends and would be back later that afternoon.

She walked several blocks to the idling Cadillac.

At about noon, the four arrived at Lucretia’s house. They woke her up. Lucretia cranked the radio so her siblings would not hear them talk.

She packed a bag. She left the house still wearing her cow print pajama bottoms.

Throughout the afternoon, the teens drove to friends’ houses.

They opened the Cadillac trunk and flashed half-empty bottles of Wolfschmidt vodka, Gilbey’s gin and Old Crow bourbon. It’s for sale, they said. The booze was stolen from Seth’s home.

They were going to Canada, they said. They needed cash.

Ashley did a lot of the talking.

“She seemed pretty nervous,” friend Jessica Ridenour said. “She pretty much told me about her new boyfriend.”

The new boyfriend was Justin.

Jessica’s brother Cody Ridenour said Justin acted “cocky,” showing off his 9 mm pistol.

“They were bragging about all the stupid stuff they were doing,” Cody Ridenour said.

At the end of the day, they drove to Haystack Reservoir outside Madras. It’s a common underage drinking spot. They cranked the car stereo and dipped into the booze. Tomorrow, if everything went according to plan, the five teens would drive toward freedom.

They could almost taste it.

Read Part 5 in the series.